Linux Blog

threed

NAME

threed - The svgalib 3d demo

SYNOPSIS

3d

DESCRIPTION

Well, the 3d demo...

I, Michael, the current svgalib maintainer, do not have any source for it.

Thus, you may experience weird problems with new svgalib versions
and you need installed a.out libc and svgalib versions.
Also the demo is known to be buggy in several aspects. Thus, do not
panic if it appears not to work for you.

If it works in a certain mode for you be happy and
play around with it. For example, with recent svgalibs,
3d
is
unable to initialize the mouse if not started directly in a linux
console for unknown reasons.

Otherwise:
Don't worry at all.

Here's the author's (Harm's) info about it:

There's also a
3d
demo binary included in this directory. It has been
in a similar state for several months now, but I'm planning to get
some work done (although it probably won't be the amazing multi-player
networked 3D lightsource-shaded real-time VGA virtual reality
simulation). I'll release the source code at some point (when it has
some degree of flexibility). I'm sorry that there's no scene
description file; it will come. So now you know you can do this kind
of thing in Linux. And it's practically 100% C code.

You can set the graphics mode to be used with the
SVGALIB_DEFAULT_MODE
environment
variable (e.g. G640x480x256). All linear 256 color, 32K color and 16M
color modes are supported, with page flipping used if available. Planar
256 color VGA modes also work. This should do 800x600 full screen 3D
animation at near 10 fps with a good system.
Request: Please report if page flipping goes wrong on a particular
chipset (e.g. ET4000, Trident) in 320x200x256. Also 32-bit pixel
truecolor modes don't work correctly, this will be fixed.
The user interface is somewhat primitive at this point:

- Use the mouse to rotate.
- Left button accelerates, right decelerates.
- Press
<W>
to move upwards,
<S>
to go down again.
- Use
<R>
and
<F>
to control the zoom factor.
-
<q> or <Ctrl>-C
exits.

Note that the light source rotates quickly at an infinite distance.
This is not something that will easily occur naturally (as far as I
know)...

This demo is part of svgalib and can be found in the
demos/
subdirectory of the original svgalib distribution. However, it is not installed in the system
by default, s.t. it is unclear where you can find it if your svgalib was installed by some
linux distribution. Even then, when you have the demo on your system, you probably won't have
the sources s.t. it is only of limited use for you.

In case of any such problem, simply get an svgalib distribution from the net. You even
don't need to install it. Just
make
in the
demos/
subdirecty. As of this writing,
svgalib-1.2.12.tar.gz
is the latest version and can be retrieved by ftp from
sunsite.unc.edu at /pub/Linux/libs/graphics
and
tsx-11.mit.edu at /pub/linux/sources/libs
which will most probably be mirrored by a site close to you.

BUGS

Countless.
In addition, source is still not available. Sorry, I just don't have it.